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Playing God

I saw the first three episodes of “Death Note” and “D. Gray-man” last night. Hmm. “Death Note” is certainly very faithful to the manga.

Like I said before in an earlier review of the manga, “Death Note” has an interesting storyline and great art. The show also looks great. I like that the show uses a chorus as background music whenever the protoganist, Light Yagami, dispatches another criminal using a special notebook called the Death Note. It fits his God complex.
This straight-A student found the notebook lying on school grounds which actually belongs to a death god or Shinigami. Writing the name of a person in the Death Note while keeping their image in your mind causes that person to die. If you don’t specify the cause of death, the person will die from a heart attack. There are other rules.

The original owner of the notebook is Ryuk, a Shinigami who dropped the Death Note in the human world because he was bored. Light is the only one who sees or hears Ryuk unless of course another human touches the Death Note.

Light thinks the world is rotten and starts killing off criminals. His plan is to create a utopia where he will rule as God. People call this killer of criminals, Kira. But the police and L, a secretive man who cracks unsolved cases, vow to capture Kira/Light. L narrows the search down to the Kanto region of Japan and convinces the international law enforcement community to make Japan the HQ of the task force.

But Light has an ace up his sleeve. The man leading the Japanese detectives is his father. The battle between L and Kira/Light commences.
I’m not so sure about “D. Gray-man” though and am wondering if I should continue watching. The show, which is based on a manga, tells the story of the exorcist Allen Walker whose deformed hand turns into a weapon that destroys Akuma. An Akuma is a weapon created by Walker’s nemesis, the Millenium Earl from someone’s soul and despair.

The Earl seeks to destroy mankind and also the substance known as Innocence which Walker and the other exorcists wield in their fight against him and his minions. Walker belongs to the Dark Religious Organization that was created to stop the Earl.

Somehow the show didn’t wow me and I even found the funny moments strangely jarring. Maybe it will grow on me later on.